Summer Entertaining Beach Party

The sun is shining and there's not a cloud in the sky

It's the absolute perfect day for a summer party. And you're all invited

But before we get started, I'm going to head down to Let's Party here in Savannah

where my girlfriend Latisse is going to show me how to set the perfect party table

And then it's back to the kitchen to serve up my savory salmon salad

and everybody's favorite summer side dish, potato salad. But this one's made Italian style

And the next I'm fixing my delicious marinated tomatoes that I plucked fresh from the garden

And finally, what better way to enjoy the fruits of summer than with a fresh blueberry tart

So y'all pack up your beach blanket and don't forget your sunscreen. Because today we're cooking up a beach party

We'll be right back

I am so ready to party after that cold winter we had

And I've got some wonderful picnic items for you today. But not only are we going to jazz up our food

we're going to jazz up the decorations. So you'll want to come with me. Let's go. Let's get going

Now when I throw my own summer fiesta, Let's Party is where I come to get all my party basics

They have tons of invitations, plates, napkins, and just a whole bunch of decorative pieces

And y'all know nothing says summer like all these beautiful bright colors

My friend Latisse is going to show me a fun way to help decorate my table for summer

A good tip she gave me was to pick out colors that can be reused again and again

Like this red you can reuse for the holidays. And yellow is great for both summer and fall

And I just couldn't believe this little trick. All she did was take two different color napkins and tie them together with a colorful ribbon

And did you know she's using just an ordinary beach towel as a tablecloth

Never even thought of that, but what a great idea. The perfect thing about these decorations, though, is they're just so inexpensive and reusable

Thanks, Latisse. You've inspired me, girl. I can hardly wait to dress up my own summer fiesta

Latisse has really gotten me in a party mood at that store. She's got me some great things in this bag, and I hope I can do them justice

The dogs are out there just frolicking because they know I'm fixing to take them to the beach

They're so excited. But before we go to the beach, I want to show you one of my favorite summer salads, a salmon salad

and to go with it, Italian potatoes that are almost as good as my mashed potatoes

For this recipe, you can use your leftover salmon. If you've grilled salmon on the grill the night before, you can use it to make this salad with

and make this meal just come together very fast and easy. And the first thing I'm going to do is add cucumbers that I've diced up

And then I've got red diced bell pepper. And we've got just a regular yellow onion

And to this, we're going to sprinkle in a little cayenne. Now, I'm not going to use too, too much

And I'm going to use a little salt. and then I'm going to add plain old mayonnaise to it

And we're just going to mix that up just like that. So all I'm going to do is take our salmon and I'm just going to flake it

Now, I like mine in chunks. I don't want it as flaky as canned tuna

So I'm going to just chunk this up just like that. Now, all we're going to do is take our eggs and my boiled eggs

I like to just crush them with my hands. Perfect. All right, now all we're gonna do is fold in our mayonnaise and our vegetables

Now this is just a good basic simple recipe, and you can jazz this up any way you like

But personally, I like simpler foods. I'm just a simple girl, so that's the way I like it

Now I'm gonna just squirt a little fresh lemon over it. Look how pretty that looks

See your big chunks of fish in there? Okay, so all I want to add to mine is some fresh ground pepper

And I like lots of pepper with that. Perfect. Now I'm going to move on to our Italian potatoes

These are great because you not supposed to refrigerate them after you get them ready So this is another one of those ideal dishes for picnicking So we just going to use these red potatoes

So all we're going to do is fill this up with hot water

and we're going to cook them until they're kind of fork tender

You can insert a knife in them, and if it goes all the way through, then they're ready

That's perfect. All right

And in the meantime, I'm gonna slip our salmon onto our dish

The last time I made this, I used actually some leftover salmon that Michael had cooked on the grill

Maybe I need to taste it out of the bowl so they won't know I've been in that

That sounds like a plan, doesn't it? This is so good. The flavors are so simple

And when we come back, I'm going to show you how to finish up those Italian potatoes

and we're going to do marinated tomatoes. I'm going to show you how to turn even one of those yucky winter tomatoes

into a delectable summer tomato. Okay, if y'all are ready, I want to show you how to make the marinade for these tomatoes

We're going to start with 3-4ths of a cup of vegetable oil

And we're going to take fresh chopped parsley, a little sugar, a little garlic salt, and a little seasoning salt

You'll want to use a good brand. and really I would prefer to use a fresh thyme

but I'm going to have to use my dried. And we're going to add a little red wine vinegar

and a little black pepper. And we're just going to whisk that together

All right, we're going to take just regular tomatoes, and we're going to cut them into

wedges of six. And you could actually use the cherry tomatoes. All right, so we've got our tomatoes, and I'm going to give this another whisk, and

I'm just going to pour this over our tomatoes. This works good too if you put it in a jar and shake it all up

That's real easy to manhandle. Now I like a little green onions with mine

I like the color that it gives it. So I'm just gonna put a few tops in there

I'm gonna just toss this all together. And I'm gonna put this in the refrigerator and I'm actually gonna let it marinate overnight

just going to dump it in a bag. You know how during the winter you can count on them being

pretty flavorless? Well, even that flavorless tomato is going to be wonderful in this marinade

So all I have to do now is stick this in the fridge, and we're going to move on to our Italian

potatoes. Our potatoes should be ready. Oh yeah, they look good. Now I'm just going to

take these over here and drain them. Watch it Gertie. I'm used to working around dogs

and kids, so that's what I'm going to do. Okay. With Gertie's help I was able to do

it. And we're just going to take our potatoes and cut them up into chunks. Now I like these

cut a little bit bigger than what I would cut for potato salad. I make these a little bit chunkier

Y'all know that I'm an old-timey home cook, and I might not always do things the way that they

properly should be done, like cutting this in my hands, but I've done it so many years

and it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Ain't that right, Gertie? Yes, Gertie said yes

So if you cut your potatoes like I do, be careful. All right, let's start on the marinade now for the potatoes

We're going to start with a half a cup of tarragon vinegar and a half a teaspoon of dried mustard

And we're going to do a tablespoon of Worcestershire. Pinch of salt

Well, maybe two pinches. And fresh parsley. and I've got some garlic cloves that I'm going to mash them just a little bit and slice them

and put over in here Okay and I got three cloves of fresh garlic and I was just about to forget the sugar I going to put oh gosh about a tablespoon in there

I'm going to put some black pepper, and then after this marinade's on the counter, you

can taste it and see if there's anything else that you want to add to it. If you think it's a little flat for you

then come back and correct your seasonings. All right, now I'm just going to pour that over

And some green onions. And I'm going to toss this around. And I don't know if you remember me telling you earlier

that we're actually going to let this sit out on the counter. You don't refrigerate this

and you could do it a minimum of four hours, and you'll want to come stir it about every hour

All right, now for the last step, I'm going to put about a cup of olive oil over that

Now you could actually put your oil in with all your other ingredients

I just kind of like to pour it over there last. See how good that looks

I think I'm gonna dip me up a little to sample it, even though I know it hadn't been four hours

All right, and I've had some tomatoes marinating overnight here. I'm gonna just put a few out here

These are so good. They have just soaked up all that wonderful marinade

I think I'm going to take a little oregano and just kind of prop it up there

I think all these salads need now is maybe just Paula's lips

When we add the salmon salad, it's going to make a fabulous cold plate

but y'all ain't seen the best part. Because come back for fresh blueberry tarts

Ain't nothing like a tart on the beach. All right, I'm getting this tart ready for the beach

and this is another one of those easy, simple, but delicious recipes

Now, I was just chopping my pecans because I'm actually going to press those down into our crust

because they're just so good in the crust of this tart. Now I'm just putting flour into the food processor

And this is powdered sugar. And we can't have a tart without a little butter

All right. All right, I'm going to pulsate it. And we're going to hit this until it just forms a ball

All right. You can see the way it's formed itself into a ball

So it's ready to take out of there. And y'all be careful when you're removing your blades from your food processor

because you're terribly sharp. All right, now I want to talk about my pan for a minute

This is actually a quiche pan slash tart pan. And the bottom comes out so you're not going to be messed up

when you go to remove your tart from the pan. And this is nonstick, so I'm not even going to spray it

I actually don't think it would need a lot of spray anyway because of all the butter

All we're going to do is just put this in the pan and pat it out. The important thing is to get your crust even and get it pushed back into the little waves

All right, so I'm just going to sprinkle those pecans around. I'm just going to spread them out

All right, our pan's ready. Now I'm going to put this into a preheated 350-degree oven

and we're going to bake this for about 10 to 12 minutes. So I've got one that's already cooled over here and we're going to finish putting it together

See how pretty it browned and I can push up the bottom and you can see we're not going

to have any problems. You know sometimes when you make pies and you go to cut that first piece it's so hard

to get out. Well this is just real, real simple in the tart pan

Now all we're gonna do is take two three ounce packages of cream cheese and some powdered

sugar and we're gonna cream those together. Now you'll want your cream cheese to be at room temperature so it won't be so hard to beat

Okie doke. And this is just powdered sugar. Alright now we're gonna turn this on and I'm actually gonna cover that just for a few minutes

so that powdered sugar won't go everywhere. All right, now while that's beaten up

I've got some whipping cream, some sweetened whipped cream that we gonna fold into this and put it into our tart pan All right so I going to blow it out for a minute and try to keep that powdered sugar in there Yeah and it coming along Our cream cheese

actually could have been maybe just a little bit softer. All right. All right, so we're

just going to fold in our whipped cream until we get that nice and incorporated. And it may

take a minute because that cream cheese is a little stiffer than the whipped cream. Okay

now I've got the cream cheese incorporated. So we're just going to come over here. All

right, we're just going to spread that over those nice toasted pecans. Now you can pack

this up and take this to the beach just like this. It might transport easier if you do it this way

And then when you get there, you can add your blueberry pie filling to the top of it

I can't wait that long. This is an ordinary blueberry pie filling

So doesn't that look delicious? All right, we've got this all ready, and I'm gonna stick this one in the refrigerator

and let it set because that whipping cream is still just a little soft

But I've got another one ready. Right here. Oh, my goodness, that's so pretty

And let's see how easy this one's going to come out. Look at that. Isn't that great

It's actually prettier than a pie, isn't it? I just love doing tarts once in a while

Oh, and I'm going to have to sample this one, and I'm going to be very, very careful

Okay, I think I've gotten him pretty loose. All right, let's see if we have any luck getting him coming out clean

Ha, ha, ha. Mmm, and I don't know why I'm bothering garnishing him

You know I'm fixing to have me a piece. I think I'm going to put a little whipped cream on top of him

Oh, a quick, easy cross between a cheesecake and a pie. Oh, that crust was nice and crispy

It's just delicious. I just love those pecans. Mm-mm-mm. Y'all stick around because when we come back

I'm going to show you how to make a chaser. for this blueberry tart

Now, we can't have a day at the beach without something really tasty to drink

So I have mixed up a quick punch. It's one part cranberry juice

one part vodka, one part peach tree snobs to three parts of pineapple juice

So in order to transport this to the beach, I have these cute little cups

Now I'm not going to fill it all the way up to the top because we're going to put these in the freezer

and it comes with great little lids with a hole in the top

for these cute little straws. Now I'm actually going to freeze them with a straw in it

So it'll already have the hole there and the straw will slip right back down in it

After it's frozen, I'm going to take the straw out and I'm going to cover the top with saran wrap and put the lid back on

In fact, I have some that's already done here. You just come in and put the saran wrap on them, snap the lid back on, throw them in your cooler

and they're going to help keep our food nice and chilled. Now, not only are these cocktails going to keep our food cold, I've also got some frozen water here in the freezer that I'm going to throw in the cooler to help keep our food cold

And don't forget, if you're taking the chillin' to the beach, throw them in plenty of flavored sodas and ice waters and orange juices, because the beach can get awfully hot and make you thirsty

I wanted y'all to see the final menu Before I packed it away in our basket

The salmon salad And the marinated tomatoes And the Italian potatoes And that blueberry tart

They make for a fabulous beach celebration And the colored paper plates

And the cute little napkins Are just adorable So I can't hardly wait to get the dogs

And the chillin' and get out on the beach We're gonna have a great time today

And so until next time, America, I send y'all best dishes and love from my beach picnic to yours